E-Mail Tools for Chapters

Hi all -- Hope someone can help.

Due to alot of volunteer recruitment this year we now have over 35 chapters and more coming on board every day.

We need a solution that will allow people to sign up for chapters and then allow the leads to e-mail their "lists" at any tiem. Right now we use mailing lists offered by our ISP but it's a kludgy solution and people have alot of trouble understanding how it works.

So two questions please -

1. Are any of you using any tools / programs I should look at?

2 We have a general, related issue relative to our data which comes to us via our website in mulitple locations, then gets into a survey tool, then imported in Donor Perfect. On top of that - e-mails need to go through our ISP for the double opt in. Needless to say - this is confusing, somewhat manual and time intensive.

I would love to get some advice from someone on what we might be able to do to bring this all together and what a budget would be. Any suggestions on a consultant that would be appropriate for this type of project? Right now I need someone who can invest a small amount of time to just understand the basics and make teh recommendaitions. Based on costs, we'd be looking at about 6-9 months before implementation.

One note: Donor Perfect is new for us, works well and we really want a solution that can work with that. Thanks.

Hi Barbara--

One question--what is your organization currently using for email? Is this a program you need to stick with

--Megan

We are currently using our ISP - Futurequest. We are completely okay with moving the volunteer e-mail function to another program if need be.

If I'm reading this correctly its not an email issue its a volunteer management system issue.

A questionable analogy based on your description :tongue; :

Your going to contact each chapter member via post card to provide them with names, phone numbers, links that pertain to their chapter. You don't ask "Should I take it to Post Office A or Post Office B?" You ask "Is there a tool that will take my volunteer list and create the customized postcards for each user?" If possible the software should allow me to print them out in Zip code order for the Post Office.

So in your case, my question is are you managing the volunteers with Donor Perfect? (I'm not familiar with that program and don't know its features.) Does Donor Perfect have a e-mailing option? If I understand correctly you are concerned with outbound mail to the group not cross talk that the mailing list is designed for.

Basically what you probably need is some script that works with your Volunteer database to generate the emails based on values in the database. (Volunteer, email address, chapter number, etc.) This may be best handled by a web application that chapter leaders can log into to compose the message and then sends the mail to the appropriate addresses.

As always with mass mailing be careful of being labeled spam. This is one way thing that a scripted solution can help with. It can break up the sending into smaller batches that shouldn't trigger spam filters.

This kind of work should be doable by any consultants who specialize in web application development.

Hope that helps a little.